Apple's Mac Business Is Nice, But It's Still Tiny

In its "Back to the Mac" event this morning, Apple boasted that it had earned more than $22 billion selling Macintosh computers in the last four quarters. That's an impressive number for Apple, especially given that Mac sales have been growing consistently faster than sales in the overall PC market.

But a little perspective is in order. Number-one PC maker HP took in $22.7 billion in revenue over the last four quarters...just from its notebook business. The desktop PC business added another $15.7 billion for HP.

Dell breaks out its revenues differently by quarter, but for the year that ended in January 2010, it reported $16.6 billion in notebook revenue and $12.9 billion in desktop revenue.

Make no mistake: Macs are cool, and Apple's growing fast. But the PC market still dwarfs it.